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PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 



From the Princeton Review, July 1865. 



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1865.] President Lincoln. 435 



Am. V. — President Lincoln. 

The scriptural doctrine of Providence assumes: 1. The real 
existence of the external world. 2. The efficiency of secondary 
causes. That is, that created minds as agents, originate their 
own acts; and that material substances have properties or 
forces inhering in them, which make them the efficient and 
necessary antecedents of their effects. 3. That all events, 
whether in nature or history (supernatural events excepted), 
have their proximate and adequate causes in the agency and 
properties of created substances, spiritual or material. 4. That 
God, as an infinite and omnipresent spirit, is not a mere spec- 
tator of the world, looking on as a mechanist upon the machine 
which he has constructed; nor is he the only efficient cause, 
so that all effects are to be referred to his agency, and so that 
the laws of nature are only the uniform methods of his operation ; 
but he is everywhere present, upholding all things by the word 
of his power, and controlling, guiding, and directing the action 
of second causes, so that all events occur according to the 
counsel of his will. An abundant harvest is proximately due 
to the operation of second. causes, but God so determines and 
directs those causes as to secure the designed result. The pros- 
perity of individuals, of communities, and of nations, is due to 
secondary causes, but those causes are so determined by God, 
that he is to be acknowledged as the Giver of all good. This 
is equally true of all events, whether prosperous or adverse, 
whether in themselves good or evil. Nothing happens by 
necessity or by chance. God governs all his creatures and all 
their actions. This universal and absolute control of Divine 
Providence is, on the one hand, consistent with the character 
of God, so that he is, in no sense, the author of sin; and, on 
the other hand, with the nature of his creatures. He governs 
free agents with certainty, but without destroying their liberty, 
and material causes, without superseding their efficiency. 

It is impossible to express or to conceive the importance of 



436 President Lincoln. [July 

these familiar principles of scriptural truth. They are not the 
discoveries of human reason; neither philosophy nor science 
(when divorced from the Bible) even accepts them. They are 
however the foundation of all religion, of all order, of all Chris- 
tian civilization ; and the only ground of confidence or hope. 

Every great event therefore is to be viewed in two different 
aspects: first, as the effect of natural causes; and, secondly, as 
a design and result of God's providence. The interpretation 
of Divine providence is indeed often a matter of great difficulty 
and responsibility. It requires humility and caution. Some 
of his dispensations are, as to their design, perfectly clear, 
others are doubtful, and others to us and for the present inscru- 
table. In one thing however we are safe; we have a right to 
infer that the actual consequences of any event, whether great 
or small, are its designed consequences; whether intended in 
judgment or mercy to those affected by them must be deter- 
mined partly by their nature, partly by their attendant circum- 
stances, and partly by the course of subsequent events. Why 
the Reformation was suppressed in Italy and Spain, and allowed 
to succeed in Northern Germany and Great Britain, we cannot 
even now determine; but it is none the less our duty to recog- 
nize these events as due to the ordering providence of God, and 
to study them as such. 

No Christian can look upon the events of the last four years 
without being deeply impressed with the conviction that they 
have been ordered by God to produce great and lasting changes 
in the state of the country, and probably of the world. Few 
periods of equal extent in the history of our race are likely to 
prove more influential in controlling the destinies of men. 
Standing, as we now do, at the close of one stage at least of 
this great epoch, it becomes us to look back and to look around 
us, that we may in some measure understand what God has 
wrought. 

Although at the South, and by the partisans of the Southern 
cause at .the North, the cause of the desolating war just brought 
to a close has been sought elsewhere than in the interests of 
slavery, the conviction is almost universal, both at home and 
abroad, that the great design and desire of the authors of the 
late rebellion were the perpetuation and extension of the system 



1865.] President Lincoln. 437 

of African slavery. That this conviction is well-f bunded is 
plain, because slavery has been from the formation of the 
government the great source of contention between the two 
sections of the country; because the immediate antecedents of 
secession -were the attempts to extend slavery into the free Ter- 
ritories of the Union ; the abrogation of the Missouri compro- 
mise, in order to facilitate that object; the Dred Scott decision, 
which shocked and roused the whole country, because it was 
regarded as proof that even the Supreme Court, the sacred 
palladium of our institutions, had become subservient to the 
slave power. The reaction produced by these attempts to per- 
petuate and extend the institution of slavery, led to the election 
of Mr. Lincoln, on the avowed platform that while slavery was 
not to be interfered with within the limits of the States which 
had adopted the institution, its extension to the free Territories 
belonging to the United States was to be strenuously resisted. 
The success of the party holding this principle was the imme- 
diate occasion of secession, and the formation of the Southern 
Confederacy. Besides these obvious facts, it is notorious that 
the public mind at the South had been exasperated by exagge- 
rated accounts of the anti-slavery feeling at the North, and 
inflamed by glowing descriptions of an empire founded on 
slavery, where all property and power should be concentrated 
in the hands of slaveholders, and all labour performed by slaves. 
This was advocated as the best organization of society, as the 
only secure foundation for what was called free institutions, and 
the only method in which the highest development of man was to 
be attained. Accordingly slavery was declared to be the corner- 
stone of the new Confederacy; slaveholders were called upon by 
the Richmond editors to sustain the burdens of the war, because 
the war was made for them ; and the editor of the leading journal 
in Charleston, South Carolina, declared that the South sought 
and desired independence only for the sake of slavery ; that if 
slavery were to be given up, they care not for independence. 
It cannot therefore be reasonably doubted that the great design 
of the authors of the rebellion was the extension and preserva- 
tion of the sj^stem of African slavery. 

As little can it be doubted that this was a most unrighteous 
end. Without going to the unscriptural extreme of maintaining 



438 President Lincoln. [July 

that all slaveholding is sinful, two tilings are, in the judgment 
of the Christian world, undeniable ; first, that however it may 
be right in certain states of society and for the time being to 
hold a class of men in the condition of involuntary bondage, 
any effort to keep any such class in a state of inferiority or 
degradation, in order to perpetuate slavery, is a great crime 
against God and man; and, secondly, that the slave laws of the 
South, being evidently designed to accomplish that end, were 
unscriptural, immoral, and in the highest degree cruel and 
unjust. It is self-evident that only an inferior race can perma- 
nently be held in slavery, and it is therefore unavoidable that 
the effort to perpetuate slavery involves the necessity of the 
perpetual degradation of a class of our fellow-men. Such was the 
design and effect of the laws which forbade slaves to be taught 
to read or write ; which prohibited their holding property; which 
made it a legal axiom that slaves cannot marry : which author- 
ized the separation of parents and children, and of those living 
as husbands and wives. These laws, which no Christian can 
justify, had been for more than a century operating at the 
South. The state of the slaves therefore in 1860 was little, if 
any, better than it was a hundred years before. Household 
servants, and, to a certain degree, the slaves in the Border 
States, had made advances in knowledge and in the^r social con- 
dition; but the great mass of the bondmen in the cotton, rice, 
and sugar plantations was to the last degree degraded. The 
journal of Mrs. Fanny Kemble, written a few years ago, pho- 
tographs these Southern plantations, the slaves, their habita- 
tions, their food, dress, and social state, their sufferings and 
wrongs, in such a way as to compel faith in the fidelity of the 
picture, while it revolts and horrifies the beholder. To lament 
over this system as an evil entailed by former generations, to 
admit that it ought not to be perpetuated, and to acknowledge 
the obligation to labour for its removal, is one thing; to main- 
tain that the system which necessitates this degradation of 
millions of our race, is a good system, which ought to be con- 
tinued and extended, is a very different thing. It is the great 
revolution which the high price of Southern productions, and 
the consequent profitableness of slavery, wrought in the opinions 
and feelings of Southern men on this subject, which is the true 



1865.] President Lincoln. 439 

cause of the terrible evils which have rendered the South a 
desolation. It could not be that an offence so great as the 
indefinite perpetuity of a system so fraught with evil, and the 
avowal of the purpose not only to perpetuate but to extend it, 
could long continue without provoking the Divine displeasure. 
There is not one man in a thousand who will not be more or 
less corrupted by the possession of absolute power, even when 
that power is legitimate. But when it is illegitimate, and 
requires for its security the constant exercise of injustice, no 
community and no human being can escape its demoralizing 
influence. This is evinced in the cast of character which it 
produces; the arrogance, insubordination, recklessness of the 
interests and rights of others, the loss of the power to restrain 
the passions which have few external restraints, which it 
unavoidably engenders. The moral sense becomes perverted 
by the necessity of justifying what is wrong, so that we see even 
good men, men whom we must regard as children of God, vin- 
dicating what every unprejudiced mind instinctively perceives 
to be wrong. It is enough to humble the whole Christian world 
to hear our Presbyterian brethren in the South declaring that 
the great mission of the Southern church was to conserve the 
system of African slavery. Since the death of Christ no such 
dogma stains the record of an ecclesiastical body. We are not 
called upon to dwell on the manifold evils, which, until recently, 
even Southern statesmen and Christians acknowledged to be the 
inevitable fruits of slavery. It is enough that it operates so 
unfavourably on the character of the masters, that it dooms the 
slave to degradation, that by rendering manual labour deroga- 
tory, it consigns a large class of the white inhabitants of slave 
countries to poverty and ignorance. The picture drawn by 
Southern men of the class known as the "poor whites," is the 
severest condemnation of slavery which has ever been exhibited 
to the world. 

The first and most obvious consequence of the dreadful civil 
war just ended, has been the final and universal overthrow of 
slavery within the limits of the United States. This is one of 
the most momentous events in the history of the world. That 
it was the design of God to bring about this event cannot be 
doubted. Although sagacious men predicted that such must be 



440 President Lincoln. [July 

the result of secession and an attempt to overthrow the consti- 
tution, it was not contemplated at the beginning, and for a long 
time after the commencement of the war it did not appear to 
be probable. Almost all foreigners, and a large class of our 
own people predicted the success of the South, and the chances 
were, so to speak, in favour at least of a compromise, which 
would leave slavery untouched within the limits of the States. 
But God has ordered it otherwise. Resistance to the constitu- 
tional limitation of slavery to the States in which it already 
existed, resistance to all plans of gradual emancipation, the 
insane purpose to dissolve the Union and overthrow the govern- 
ment in favour of this system, have led to its sudden and final 
overthrow. The inevitable difficulties and sufferings consequent 
on such an abrupt change in the institutions and social organiza- 
tion of a great people, must be submitted to, as comprehended 
in the design of God in these events. 

Although the destruction of slavery seems to have been the 
great end intended in our recent trials, it is plain that this 
war was designed to affect other important changes in the state 
of the country. It has settled some of those political questions 
which kept the public mind in a state of constant agitation. It 
has determined the limits of State sovereignty. Sovereignty is 
independence ; freedom from any control which is not inward or 
subjective. He is a sovereign who has the right and the power 
to do as he pleases. A ruler is sovereign when his own will is 
his only law; a State is sovereign when it has the right to regu- 
late all its affairs, internal and external, according to its own good 
pleasure. It is plain that sovereignty is a matter of degrees. 
Absolute independence belongs only to God. There is no ruler 
on earth who is not more or less bound by the usages, traditions, 
and rights of the people whom he governs. There is no nation 
that is not restricted by the common law of nations. The war 
has not destroyed the sovereignty of the States; it has simply 
defined it. It has nut obliterated State lines nor abrogated 
State rights ; it has only settled the fact that we are a nation, 
and not a confederacy of nations, from which any member or 
any number of members may withdraw at pleasure. The United 
States are an indissoluble whole, composed of many self-govern- 
ing communities, whose rights and sovereignty are limited in an 



1865.] President Lincoln. 441 



equal degree by a common constitution. The great point 
decided is, that, the allegiance of every American citizen is 
primarily due to the United States, and not to the particular 
State to which he may belong. This is only saying that the 
constitution of the United States, and the laws and treaties 
made in accordance therewith, bind the conscience of the people, 
anything in the laws, constitution, or acts of their own States 
to the contrary notwithstanding. To this conclusion the war 
forced the South itself. It was seen that the self-defence of 
their Confederacy as a whole was impossible on the theory of 
the independent sovereignty of its several parts. To this con- 
clusion, therefore, the whole country has been brought. We 
are one nation henceforth, so long as it shall please God to> 
grant us his favour. 

Another consequence of the war, nearly allied to the one 
just mentioned, has been the development of the sentiment of 
nationality. This sentiment was deeply settled in the public 
mind; but it was in a measure dormant. The war has called it 
into vigorous and conscious exercise. When the assault on 
Fort Sumter roused the nation from its slumber, the people 
started to their feet in the full consciousness of their nationality. 
That sentiment has nerved their arms, sustained their faith, 
courage, and patience through four terrible years. It made 
them willing to send fathers, sons, and brothers to the battle- 
field, and cheerfully to bear the heavy load of taxation required 
by the exigencies of the country. It cherished in the popular 
mind the settled purpose to save the life of the nation at what- 
ever cost. No one can doubt that this sentiment is stronger and 
more general now than it ever was before. Nor can it be 
doubted that it must tend to strengthen the bonds of our 
government, and to give consistency and power to our govern- 
ment, both at home and abroad. 

Another no less obvious effect of the war has been the aston- 
ishing development of the power and resources of the country. 
It never entered the imagination of any man that the United 
States would be able to raise, equip, and sustain, year after 
year, an army of from five to eight hundred thousand men ; 
a navy of several hundred armed vessels; to raise from the 
voluntary contributions of the people three thousand millions 

vol. XXXVII. — NO. III. 56 



442 President Lincoln. , [July 

of dollars; to provide the immense stores of ordnance, arms, 
and other munitions of war neces'sary for such a conflict; to 
organize the vast material of the quartermaster, commissary, 
hospital and ambulance departments; in short, no one dreamed 
that we could rise in four years from one of the lowest to the 
very highest of the military powers of the earth. What are to 
be the effects of this astonishing development of power, or what 
the design of God in thus rousing the nation to exhibit its giant 
strength in the face of the whole world, we can but conjecture 
and hope. The effect must necessarily be to increase our self- 
respect. We have earned the right to place ourselves in the 
rank of the foremost nations of the age. God grant that the 
consciousness of strength may not render us arrogant, unjust, 
or aggressive. It will be a great blessing if this giant should 
now seek repose, or devote his strength to the works of peace ; 
to conquering the wilderness, to developing the resources of the 
country, and to making it the refuge of the oppressed and the 
home of the free. The impression produced on foreign nations 
by this exhibition of the power and resources of the United 
States, must be no less profound, and tend, it is to be hoped, 
to lead them to be less disparaging and contemptuous in their 
language and spirit, and more disposed to cultivate the relations 
of amity and peace. If such power and resources are pos- 
sessed, and capable of being called into action by a moiety of 
the nation, what may be expected from its energy as a whole, 
from the united North and South, should any great emergency 
call for the manifestation of our combined strength? 

Another consequence of the war, for which we are bound to 
be deeply grateful to God, is the astonishing exhibition of bene- 
volence of which it has been the occasion. The history of the 
Christian and Sanitary Commissions will constitute one of the 
brightest pages in the records of the human race. Never before 
were millions of money raised annually by voluntary contribu- 
tions for the alleviation of human suffering; never before were 
so many persons of both sexes found willing to devote their 
time and labour, and risk life and health to carry relief to the 
suffering, and instruction and consolation to the dying. Our 
land was covered with ministering angels, and our armies and 
hospitals everywhere attended and followed by these messengers 



1865.] President Lincoln. 443 

of mercy. Still further, at no period of our history has there 
been such a religious spirit generally manifested by the people 
of this land. More prayer has probably been offered to God 
during the past years, from sincere hearts, than in any ten 
years of the previous history of our country; Never before 
have there been such frequent, open, and devout recognitions of 
the authority of God as the Ruler of nations, and of Jesus 
Christ, his Son, as the Saviour of the world, by our public men, 
as during the progress of this terrible war. 

The war has closed. It has done its work for the present, 
both of judgment and mercy. While it has reformed some great 
evils, and conferred upon us some great national blessings, it 
has left us a heritage of new and difficult problems, in the solu- 
tion of which the character of the nation and the welfare of 
this and of coining generations is deeply involved. Among 
these problems are, 1. The proper treatment of those who have 
been engaged in the rebellion ; 2. The reorganization of society 
necessary on the sudden transition from slave to free labour; 

3. The means to be adopted to secure the rights of the freedmen, 
and to promote their mental, moral, and social improvement; 

4. How far they are to be admitted, and by what degrees, and 
on what terms, to the right of suffrage and all other privileges 
of citizenship. These are subjects on which extreme opinions 
are zealously advocated by earnest and powerful parties. Just 
when these momentous questions arise for decision, the man 
who, of all others, by common consent was the best qualified, 
both by his character and adventitious circumstances, to deal 
with them, has been called away. The government has changed 
hands, not by the expiration of the term of one chief magistrate 
and the election of another; not even by the death of the 
President in the course of nature, but by the sudden, unex- 
pected blow of an assassin. This is the event which summoned 
the nation to humiliation and prayer. Never were these duties 
more incumbent. The fact that all things are ordered by God, 
and must work out his wise designs, does not change the nature 
of afflictions, or modify the duties which flow from them as 
afflictions. When God brings any great calamity upon us, he 
means us to feel it. He designs that we should be humbled, 
that we should mourn and pray. It is thus that he makes our 



444 President Lincoln. [July 

trials the means of good. If we harden our hearts under his 
chastising hand; if we refuse to mourn and to humble ourselves 
in his sight, our afflictions become punishments, and work out 
for us only evil, however they may minister to the good of 
others. 

The violent death of such a man as President Lincoln in such 
a crisis, was therefore a proper occasion for national sorrow, 
humiliation, and prayer. 

It is, in the first place, a most mysterious event. We cannot 
see the reason for it, nor conjecture the end it is designed to 
accomplish. We can see the reason for many of our recent 
national disasters. Had we been as overwhelmingly successful 
at the beginning as we have been at the close of the war, none 
of the great results to which we just referred would have fol- 
lowed. Slavery would not have been overthrown, and nation- 
ality would not have been vitalized; our power would not have 
been developed, and our stand among the nations of the earth 
would have been very different from what it is at present. But 
why Mr. Lincoln should have been murdered just when he was 
most needed, most loved, and most trusted, is more than any 
man can tell. God however is wont to move in a mysterious 
way. It was mysterious to the struggling church of the first 
centuries, when the apostles, and afterwards one great leader, 
and another, and another were cut down. It was and is a 
mystery why the early Reformers had their voices, when raised 
to proclaim the gospel in a corrupt age, choked in the flames; 
why Henry IV. of France, who stood between the cruel fana- 
ticism of the Romanists and the Protestants of that fair land, 
should be the victim of assassination; or why the pious and 
lovely Edward VI. of England, should have been taken away 
at the dawn of the Reformation ; or why the graceful head of 
the godly Lady Jane Grey should have fallen on the scaffold. 
These are things we cannot, even after the lapse of centuries, 
understand. There is a use in mystery. What are we, that 
we should pretend to understand the Almighty unto perfection, 
or that we should assume to trace the ways of him whose foot- 
steps are in the great deep? It is good for us to be called 
upon to trust in God when clouds and darkness are round 
about him. It makes us feel our own ignorance and impotency, 



1865.] President Lincoln. 445 

and calls into exercise the highest attributes of our Christian 
nature. It is therefore doubtless a beneficent dispensation 
which calls upon this great nation to stand silent before God, 
and say, It is the Lord, let him do what seemeth good in his 
sight. The Judge of all the earth must do right. 

The death of Mr. Lincoln is not only a mysterious event ; it 
is just cause of great national sorrow. The leader in the oppo- 
sition in the British House of Commons recently said, in refe- 
rence to this event, that on rare occasions national calamities 
assume the character of domestic afflictions. This is eminently 
true. When Mr. Lincoln died, the nation felt herself widowed. 
She rent her garments, she sat in the dust, put ashes on her 
head, and refused to be comforted. Never in our history, sel- 
dom if ever in the history of the world, has the heart of a great 
people been so moved as when, on the 15th of April last, the 
intelligence flashed over the country that our President had 
been murdered. It was not merely sorrow for the loss of a great 
man when most needed, or of one who had rendered his country 
inestimable services, but grief for a man whom every one per- 
. sonally loved. It was this that gave its peculiar character to 
that day of lamentation. Still more remarkable in the annals 
of the country and of the world was the 19th of April— the 
day of the President's funeral. At 12 o'clock, noon, of that 
memorable day, the whole country was draped in mourning; 
our palaces and cottages, our public buildings and private resi- 
dences, our cities, and villages, and isolated dwellings. Wealth 
veiled herself in crape, and poverty sought some symbol of 
sorrow, however insignificant. All our churches at that hour 
were filled with weeping worshippers. Millions of people were 
on their knees before God. The sun never shone on such a 
spectacle. Where, moreover, can history point to a funeral 
progress of fifteen hundred miles through countless myriads of 
uncovered mourners? The past cannot be recalled. It was 
truly said by the Rev. Dr. Dix, of New York, "Abraham Lin- 
coln has been canonized and immortalized by the blow of an 
assassin." No effect is without its adequate cause. Such an 
unparalleled movement of the heart of this great people; such 
an answering cry of indignation and sorrow from foreign, and 
even unfriendly nations, prove beyond contradiction that Abra- 



446 President Lincoln. [July 

ham Lincoln deserved to be reverenced, loved, and lamented, as 
few rulers of men have ever merited the confidence and love of 
their fellow-men. 

It was his character, his public services, and the avowed 
principles of his administration which gave him this hold on 
the heart of the people, and renders his death so great a national 
calamity. 

As to his character, little need be said. He was a plain 
man. His early life was passed in the self-denial and toil of 
poverty. He was in great measure a self-educated man ; the 
simplest rudiments of learning were all that he received in the 
schools. Education however is not learning; it is the exercise 
and development of the powers of the mind. There are two 
great methods by which this end may be accomplished. It may 
be done in the halls of learning, or in the conflicts of life. Mr. 
Lincoln's education was effected by the latter method. He was 
born in 1809. In his twenty-seventh year he was elected a 
member of the Legislature of Illinois, where he served for 
several years in succession. In 1837 he was admitted to the 
bar; in 1846 he was chosen a member of Congress; in 1848 he- 
was a delegate to the national convention; in 1858 he sustained 
on equal terms his protracted struggle with Mr. Douglas before 
the people of Illinois and under the eyes of the whole nation. 
Thus for twenty-three years before his election to the Presidency 
in 1860, his mind was taxed to its utmost, and was in constant 
contact with the great questions and principles which agitated 
the public mind. During the four years of his first term of office, 
which of all the colleges or universities of Christendom could 
have afforded him such an educational discipline? He grew in 
those years probably more than in all his previous life. As an 
intellectual man, therefore, for his natural mental endowments, 
for the acquisition of knowledge gained in all these struggles and 
political conflicts; for the discipline to which he was subjected 
during his official career, he deserves the high admiration of his 
country as a man of sterling ability. None but pedants can 
look on Mr. Lincoln as an uneducated man. He had a culture 
a thousand times more effective than that usually effected in the 
schools of learning. He was remarkably sagacious; perceiving 
intuitively the truth, presenting it clearly, and sustaining it 



1865.] President Lincoln. 447 

with arguments pertinent and conclusive. Some of his state 
papers and public letters are masterly; they can hardly be 
excelled as means of accomplishing the end he had in view. 
He was reticent of his plans and purposes. He weighed long 
and deliberately his own measures, with little consultation. 
Facile and easily influenced on minor matters, he was immovable 
on all great questions on which he had once made up his mind. 
He was therefore consistent in all his plans and principles. He 
kept a steady hand on the helm of state, and never suffered the 
ship of the nation to swerve from its course. His moral cha- 
racter was unimpeachable; his integrity was proverbial; he was 
known among men as honest Abraham Lincoln. , The crowning 
trait of his character however was his tenderness of heart; it 
was this more than his talents, position, or services that 
endeared him to the people. A volume might be filled with 
illustrations of this feature of his character. There is not an 
instance on record in which an application for mercy or relief 
was not either granted or tearfully declined. It was a standing 
order at the White House, that no matter how he was engaged, 
day or night, no one who came to him with a petition for pardon 
should be either turned aside or delayed. He has risen at mid- 
night, and ridden several miles to a distant post, for fear that a 
reprieve should not reach lis destination in time. A father 
applied to the proper authorities for permission for a son in the 
rebel service to return home, and was refused. A younger bro- 
ther, a mere boy, determined to make a personal appeal to the 
President. He was readily admitted, and presented his peti- 
tion. " Ah, my son," said Mr. Lincoln, "that is a case in which 
I cannot interfere." "But, sir," replied the boy, "my mother 
is ill, and will die if my brother does not come home." This 
the President could not stand, and without a word wrote and 
signed the order of release. If this were a weakness, God 
bless the weak ! AVc should remember that Jesus Christ never 
refused to relieve the sufferings or hear the prayers of any child 
of sorrow, no matter how unworthy or sinful he might be. And 
if God were not thus merciful, we should all perish. This trait 
in Mr. Lincoln's character was so conspicuous, it is not necessary 
to dwell upon it. It was made a complaint against him by 
sterner men, that he often stood in the way of justice. How- 



448 President Lincoln. [July 

ever this may have been, it cannot be denied that the people 
loved him for his tenderness. God poured on his head the 
excellent oil of mercy, and its fragrance fills the land. 

No one of our Presidents so frequently and devoutly acknow- 
ledged his dependence upon God, or so earnestly requested the 
prayers of God's people in his behalf. The Hon. Mr. Colfax, 
an elder in the Presbyterian Church, and one of the most inti- 
mate of Mr. Lincoln's personal friends, has given public sanc- 
tion to the report, which has been so extensively circulated, of 
his avowal of his personal faith in Christ, and love for the 
_ divine Redeemer. There is much therefore in the mental and 
moral character of our late President, and in the integrity, 
purity, and kindness of his heart, to account for the deep reve- 
rence and love universally manifested for him throughout the 
country and the whole civilized world. A man who retained in 
the highest post of honour and power the native simplicity of 
his character, without affectation or assumption; who was never 
dismayed by disaster nor elated by success; who bore insult and 
injustice without enmity or retaliation; who laboured to the 
last to do good to his enemies ; who never exulted over a fallen 
foe; who felt "malice for none, and charity for all," assuredly 
deserves the epithets of both good and great. As such, Abra- 
ham Lincoln will be known in all coming time. 

His public services cannot yet be fully appreciated. He was 
called to the administration of the government at the outbreak 
of the greatest rebellion of modern times. The task which he 
had to accomplish was pronounced by all the leading statesmen 
of Europe to be impossible. To reduce to submission to the 
constitution and laws a population of seven or eight millions of 
men, occupying a territory of a thousand miles in extent, with 
a seacoast of more than double that amount; animated by one 
spirit, inflamed with the deadliest passions; whose pride, power, 
possessions, and cherished institutions were all staked on the 
issue ; led by men of the highest courage and culture, and sus- 
tained by the avowed sympathy and secret aid of almost all 
foreign governments, was indeed a herculean task. This work 
had to be undertaken without preparation, without an army, 
without a navy, without adequate supplies of any kind. Every- 
thing had to be created, and w r hen prepared, had to be used 



1865.] President Lincoln. 449 

under every disadvantage arising from the number and distance 
of the places to be guarded or assailed. The work however has 
been done ; the Union is restored ; the constitution is preserved ; 
the rights of property, the liberty of speech and of the press 
remain intact. No breach has been made in our fundamental 
law; no encroachment allowed on the charter of our rights. 
We are as free a people at this moment as when the war began. 
We have risen immensely in power and influence among the 
nations of the earth. Four millions of slaves have been eman- 
cipated by the course of events, and without infraction of the 
constitution. Mr. Lincoln's administration bids fair to form 
one of the most important epochs in the history of the world. 
The man who entered on the epoch aware of the tremendous 
responsibility he assumed, and begging his fellow-citizens to 
pray for him ; and who so conducted the affairs of the govern- 
ment, that the struggle, under the blessing of God, has resulted 
in the complete success of the national cause, has rendered a 
service to his country and to the world which few men have 
ever rendered to the generation in which they lived. 

As to the principles of his administration, a religious journal 
is not the place for any extended discussion. Our only object, 
is to indicate in few words what we regard as those principles of 
his policy which constitute a part of his claim on the love and 
gratitude of his country. 

The first thing to be noticed under this head is, that while 
Mr. Lincoln had definite and avowed objects in view, he writh 
singular wisdom kept himself free as to the means to be adopted 
for their accomplishment. He was no fanatic, wedded to one 
idea, or to any abstract principle. If one plan would not do. 
he would try another. He formed the simple determination to 
do the best he could ; but Avhat was best he did not attempt to 
decide beforehand, but left to be determined by the circum- 
stances of the country and the state of the public mind./ The 
object of the war from the beginning, he declared to be the 
preservation of the Union and the authority of the constitution. 
To this object he steadily adhered. It was not. and it never 
became an anti-slavery Avar. The abolition of slavery was no 
more a legitimate object of civil war than the abolition of false 
religion. Mr. Lincoln distinctly declared, that if he could .-■ 
xxxvu. — no. in. 57 



450 President Lincoln. [July 

the Union with slavery, he would do it; if the destruction of 
slavery was necessary to the preservation of the Union, he 
would do all he lawfully could to overthrow that system. It 
was not until he became convinced that, as the war had been 
inaugurated for the preservation and extension of slavery, it 
could not be successfully terminated without emancipating the 
slaves, that he resolved upon that measure. God has evidently 
so overruled the course of events that the destruction of slavery 
is the inevitable consequence of the triumph of the national 
arms. The wisdom of the President was however conspicuously 
displayed in his adhering to the legitimate object of the war, 
and allowing emancipation to follow as a consequence, instead 
of making it an end to be distinctly aimed at. 

Another prominent feature of Mr. Lincoln's administration 
was a spirit of conciliation. From first to last he endeavoured 
to persuade the revolted States to return to their allegiance, in 
order to save them from the miseries of war. And in the pro- 
cess of reconstruction his ruling idea was to disturb as little as 
possible existing relations, to inflict as few penalties as possible, 
and to restore all rights and privileges as fully and as rapidly 
as was consistent with public safety. He made a clear distinc- 
tion between sin and sinners, between the offence and the 
offenders. This is a distinction which is not commonly made, 
for the obvious reason that generally there is no legitimate 
ground for it. In ordinary cases of theft and murder all the 
criminality and turpitude which belong to the offence attach 
also to the offender. But in other cases, especially in the 
offences of nations or communities, the distinction is legitimate 
and important. Idolatry is a great crime; it is apostasy from 
God. It is denounced in the Bible as the greatest of all sins ; 
it is declared to be always inexcusable. And yet no man can 
doubt that had we been born in India or Africa, we too would 
have been idolaters. Popery, the worship of the Virgin Mary, 
the adoration of the Host, are justly regarded by all Protestants 
as great offences against God and Christ. But had we been 
born in Italy or Spain, we too had been papists. Slavery, as 
it existed at the South (meaning by slavery the whole system of 
slave laws there in force) is also a great moral evil. And yet 
had we been born and educated under that system, we doubtless 



/ 

1865.] President Lincoln. 451 

would either have acquiesced in it or defended it. Rebellion is 
a great crime (unless for just cause,) and the rebellion of the 
South was wanton and wicked: yet we must be strong in our 
seff-conceit if we take for granted that had we been South Caro- 
linians or Georgians, we should have resisted the overwhelming 
tide of popular feeling. This is not apologizing for idolatry, 
popery, slavery, or rebellion. It is only saying in other words 
what our blessed Lord himself says, when he declares it will be 
more tolerable in the day of judgment for the heathen than for 
us. This is true, not because heathenism is not the sum and 
essence of all moral evil, but because there is in such cases a 
great distinction between the criminality of an offence in itself 
considered, and the responsibility of the offender. The reason 
for this is obvious. A man's character, his opinions, feelings, 
and conduct are determined in part by the inward principles of 
his nature, and largely by the external influences to which he is 
subject. If kept in ignorance of the truth; if error is con- 
stantly inculcated, and all the power of education and example 
be brought to bear in favour of evil, it is almost unavoidable 
that the judgment will be perverted and the mind corrupted. 
Men thus brought up to regard idolatry, popery, slavery, or any 
other form of evil to be right, and surrounded by those who 
support and defend it, will not, by a righteous judge, as our 
Lord teaches, be dealt with according to the heinousness of the 
offence in itself considered, but according to the circumstances 
and opportunities of the offender. That Mr. Lincoln recog- 
nized this obvious principle of justice is plain from his official 
declarations and acts. 

It is no less plain that he made another distinction equally 
important, viz., that between moral and political offences. Mr. 
Lincoln was not an advocate for impunity in crime. He did 
not refuse to allow the law to take its course when men were 
convicted of slave- trading, of arson, or murder. Executions 
for all these offences occurred under his administration, and 
with his official sanction. But he declared his aversion to the 
infliction of capital punishment for any political offences. If 
any of the rebel commanders, or other officials, should be con- 
victed of burning cities, of murdering our soldiers, or starving 
our prisoners, he would have acquiesced in their being punish- 



452 President Lincoln. [July 

ed to the full extent of their criminality. In this the public 
conscience, as well as the public feeling, would fully have sus- 
tained him. But he saw clearly that there is a great difference 
between moral criminals and political offenders. This is a dis- 
tinction which is made by all enlightened and Christian people. 
Great Britain and our own country have entered into treaties with 
other nations for the delivering to justice, of forgers, murder- 
ers, thieves, but not of rebels. Political refugees find a secure 
asylum under the flag of England, and of the United States, 
wherever it floats on land or sea. Even the Turks have acted 
on this principle, and refused to deliver to their Russian neigh- 
bours those who had rebelled against the authority of the Czar. 
This is not done on the assumption that rebellion is not often, 
perhaps generally, a great moral offence, but because whether it 
is an offence against morality or not, depends on circumstances. 
The right of revolution is a sacred right of freedom. It is a 
right which, if Englishmen and Americans had not claimed 
and exercised, despotism had now been universal and inex- 
orable. It is of special moment in times of popular excite- 
ment, that great principles of moral and of civil policy should 
be kept constantly in view. It is plain that rebellion, as homi- 
cide, may be an atrocious crime, or justifiable, or commenda- 
ble, according to circumstances. Whereas moral offences are 
always, and under all circumstances, evil. A good thief, or a 
good murderer, is as much a solecism as good wickedness. But 
a good rebel is no such solecism. Hampden was a rebel, so 
was Washington; they and thousands of other good men have 
risen in armed resistance to constituted authority, and such 
resistance has been justified by the verdict of the enlightened 
conscience of the world. But even when rebellion is not justi- 
fiable ; nay, when it is not only a great mistake, but really a 
great crime in itself considered, it does not necessarily follow 
that those who commit it must be wicked men. It is often the 
effect of wrong political theories. In the protracted wars in 
England, between the houses of York and Lancaster, good men 
were found on either side. So also, in the war between Charles 
I. and the Parliament; between the adherents of the Stuarts 
and the house of Hanover. It did not follow that a man was 
wicked because he conscientiously believed that the Pretender 



1865.] President Lincoln. 453 

was legally entitled to the British throne. A man might be a 
Christian, and believe that the Salic law bound the Spanish 
nation, and rendered it incumbent on him to be a Carlist. In 
like manner it cannot be doubted that thousands of our South- 
ern brethren religiously believed that their allegiance was due 
first to their several States, then, and only conditionally, to the 
Union. This does not infer moral depravity. No sane man 
can believe that all the Episcopal, Presbyterian, Methodist, 
and Baptist clergy and laity, who entered into the rebellion, 
were unrenewed, wicked men. There is, therefore, a distinc- 
tion between political offences and ordinary crimes, and to treat 
both alike would be a violation of the plainest principles of jus- 
tice. This is not saying that rebellion, except for adequate 
cause, is not a moral offence ; nor is it saying that the late 
Southern rebellion was not a great crime, for such it assuredly 
was ; nor is it saying that because a man thinks a thing is 
right, to him it is right ; but it is saying that there may be a 
great difference between the criminality of ar%act in itself, and 
the blameworthiness of the offenders. Men forget what a 
strange anomalous thing human nature, is. There have been 
pious persecutors, and pious slave-traders. The Scotch Cove- 
nanters believed that it was the duty of the civil magistrate to 
suppress false religions, and therefore they felt justified in 
treating their opponents as their opponents treated them. As 
Samuel hewed Agag in pieces, they believed heretics should be 
put to death. John Newton (author of hymns still sung in all 
our churches,) was a slave-trader after his conversion. Why, 
then, must we take it for granted that every man who aided 
the rebellion was in heart a reprobate. 

The reason why the people join in the clamour for the judi- 
cial condemnation of the rebels, is that they do not discriminate 
in their own minds between the indignation excited by the 
atrocities committed during the rebellion and the political offence 
itself. That our prisoners were massacred, or deliberately 
starved to death, that cities were burned, and hundreds of 
Union men persecuted to death, may well excite the greatest 
abhorrence, and call for the severest condemnation. Let the 
authors of such offences be arrested and tried for these atroci- 



454 President Lincoln. [July 

ties, and no voice will be raised in opposition. But this is 
very different from calling for the judicial execution of the abet- 
tors of the rebellion for their crime against the state. We be- 
lieve indeed that the authors of the rebellion were, to a great 
degree, controlled by a wicked ambition and the desire to per- 
petuate slavery. Men however can be tried only for overt acts. 
One man may commit the same act from one motive and an- 
other for another. One may act under the influence of the 
worst feelings of our nature, and another from a mistaken sense 
of duty, and from a wrong political theory. We join, there- 
fore, in denouncing the late rebellion as a great crime ; we be- 
lieve that its authors and abetters, in many cases, were influ- 
enced by bad motives ; that there is no apology for the spirit 
of pride, arrogance, malice, and hatred, which so generally 
characterized all classes at the South during this struggle ; we 
abhor the cruelties, the murders, confiscations, and violence 
of all kinds of which loyal men were made the victims ; and we 
believe our late president would not have shielded any of the 
authors of these acts of cruelty and violence from the just pun- 
ishment of their crimes. All this may be admitted, and it re- 
mains none the less true, that the political offence of rebellion 
is to be distinguished from these crimes by which it was atten- 
ded. Good men shared in the rebellion, but not in these acts 
of violence. Mr. Lincoln's avowed purpose not to inflict the 
extreme penalty of the law upon political crimes was, therefore, 
perfectly consistent with his condemnation of the rebellion, and 
his abhorence of the spirit and conduct of its authors. 

Another reason on which this purpose was founded was that, 
while the punishment of ordinary crimes is indispensable to the 
well-being of society, the punishment of political offences is 
often unnecessary. In many cases treason and rebellion, when 
confined to a few persons, must be severely punished, as the 
only means of deterring others from the commission of the 
same offence. But when a rebellion involves a great multitude 
of men, and leads to a civil war which issues in the establish- 
ment of the legitimate government, no such necessity ordin- 
arily exists. The misery and loss consequent on the suppres- 
sion of such outbreaks answers all the ends of punishment as 
a means of prevention. In the present case, no man can esti- 



1865.] President Lincoln. 455 

mate the amount of suffering which the rebellion has entailed 
upon the South. The loss of property must amount to many 
thousands of millions of dollars ; all productive industry has 
been interrupted for four years; cities have been destroyed; 
whole districts of country laid waste; the great body of the 
property-holders have been impoverished. To this must be 
added the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives. Fathers, 
sons, and brothers have been swept away. Almost every fami- 
ly is in mourning. Besides all this, the South has lost its pres- 
tige and preponderance. They are no longer masters. They 
are humbled in their own eyes, and in the eyes of the whole 
world. If all this is not sufficient to prevent rebellion for cen- 
turies to come, no number of executions for political offences 
can have any effect. We might as well empty a cup of water 
into the ocean to increase its volume. 

Thirdly, all unnecessary punishments are positive evils. 
They exasperate instead of subduing; they exalt criminals into 
martyrs. The sympathy felt for the victims is transferred to 
the cause for which they suffer. Unnecessary punishment 
degrades justice into vengeance; all history proves its impo- 
licy. Ireland, Poland, and Venetia, stand as examples and 
warnings. It is as necessary to conciliate the South as it was 
to subdue it. If we fail in this, we cut the locks of our own 
strength, and prepare millions of allies for any foreign enemy 
by whom we may hereafter be assailed. Nothing would better 
please the despots of the Old World than that we should pursue 
such a course as to make the South to us what Ireland is to 
England and Poland to Russia. The cry for blood and confis- 
cation which has been raised in so many quarters, and which 
has desecrated so many sanctuaries, is insensate as well as anti- 
Christian. It is a cry for the nation not only to degrade but 
to enfeeble itself, and to entail upon our posterity a burden which 
it will be hard for them to bear. Our only security is in doing 
right. Let us be as magnanimous and generous in victory as 
we were brave and constant in conflict. The character of our 
country, and its influence for good over other nations depends 
more perhaps on the way in which we use our victory than upon 
success in securing it. This our friends abroad all see, and 
therefore with one voice they deprecate all judicial vengeance, 



456 President Lincoln. [July 

and call upon us to give to the world an example of leniency 
as imposing as our exhibition of courage and strength. 

Once more, the divinely appointed method of overcoming 
evil is to return good for evil. If thy enemy hunger, feed him ; 
if he thirst, give him drink; for by so doing thou shalt heap 
coals of fire upon his head. All that is necessary is that we 
should act as the Christian Commission did in dealing with the 
rebel wounded and prisoners. They fed, clothed, nursed, and 
tended them, without making it an antecedent condition that 
they should renounce their political heresies, or profess repent- 
ance for their rebellion. All they had to do was to be submis- 
sive and quiet. The consequence was that thousands were 
converted from enemies into friends. 

President Lincoln however was no weakling. Although his 
avowed policy was that of conciliation ; although he earnestly 
desired to make the South cordially loyal and submissive to 
the government, and win them back to the love of the Union 
which their fathers had cherished, his main object nevertheless 
was the security of the government and of our national institu- 
tions ; and therefore it was only so far as was consistent with 
that object that he favoured the restoration of the abettors of 
the rebellion to the rights of citizenship and to the possession 
of political power. But his views of what was consistent with 
the public safety were of the largest and most liberal character. 

The principles which regulated his action regarding slavery, 
constituted a third distinguishing feature of Mr. Lincoln's 
policy. On this subject he held, 1. That all men are the chil- 
dren of Adam; made of one blood and possessing the same 
nature; and therefore are all entitled to be regarded and treated 
as men. No symptom of permanent slavery can be justified, 
except on -the assumption that the enslaved class are a different 
and inferior race of beings. If all men are by nature one, if 
all have the same essential attributes of humanity, there can 
be no just reason why one class should be for ever condemned to 
inferiority and bondage. It was the great scriptural truth of 
the unity of the human race as to origin and species, which lay 
at the foundation of all President Lincoln's opinions and policy 
in regard to slavery. 

2. This being the case, neither the colour of the skin, nor 



1865.] President Lincoln. 457 

unessential differences in the varieties of men, is any just ground 
for a permanent distinction between one class of men and an- 
other. He held that every man fit to be free (and not otherwise) 
was entitled to be free; that every man able to manage property 
had the right to hold property; and that every man capable of 
discharging the duties of a father is entitled to the custody of 
his children. From this it would follow, by parity of reason, 
that every man who has the intelligence and moral character 
necessary to the proper exercise of the elective franchise is 
entitled to enjoy it, if compatible with the public good. In 
other words, these rights and privileges cannot justly be made 
dependent on the colour of the skin or any other adventitious 
difference. On the other hand, it is a dictate of common sense 
that no man, whether white or black, has a right to exercise 
any privilege for which he is not qualified. A child, or a crimi- 
nal, is not entitled to the liberty due to an adult or to a virtuous 
man. An idiot or a lunatic is not entitled to the control of 
property or the custody of children; nor are the grossly igno- 
rant or vicious entitled to the exercise of any civil prerogative 
which they cannot enjoy with safety to society. 

Once more, it is plain that Mr. Lincoln was opposed to all 
sudden revolutionary changes. These were to be avoided, and 
he strove to avoid them so far as was consistent with the 
paramount aim of his administration, the preservation of the 
national life. 

Such we regard as a correct, although very imperfect view 
of the character, the services, and principles of our lamented 
President. The profound grief occasioned by his death, the 
abiding sense of the loss which the nation has sustained in his 
being called away at this important crisis of our history, not 
only prove the high estimate entertained of his character and 
services, but the almost universal approbation accorded by the 
people to the distinctive principles of his administration. This 
public judgment cannot be reversed; nor can it be safely dis- 
regarded. Popular excitement may cause the public mind to 
swerve for a time from the course marked out by this greal 
and good man, but the national heart, having once approved of 
his policy, will be sure to revert to it, and pay him the highest 
honour a people can render a ruler, by carrying out his prin- 

VOL. xxxvii. — no. in. 58 



458 President Lincoln. [July. 

ciples, and doing what he would have done, had God spared 
his life. 

We are called upon to humble ourselves before God under 
a great national bereavement, but, at the same time, we are 
bound to render thanks to the Giver of all good, for having 
raised such a man as Mr. Lincoln to the presidency in the day 
of our trial, and also to pray that the mantle of the dead may 
fall upon the living; that the Spirit which was on him who led 
us through the wilderness, may be given in double measure to 
him whose office it is to give the nation rest. 



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LB S '12 



